After waiting around for three days for my modest library of music (2,047 songs to be exact) to finally upload to Google's servers, I got a chance to really try out Google Music Beta and see if it's going to be something worth using. In theory, the concept is quite enticing: a cloud-based service that enables audiophiles to access their music virtually anywhere. However, its execution is a little messy. To be fair, it is still in beta, but there are some areas where Google Music could really use some improvement, and some that they do just fine.

When I first set it up, Google Music scanned my entire iTunes library before proceeding to send it up to the cloud. The whole process is very easy, and when I say "entire", I mean the whole enchilada: recently synced music, podcasts and all of my custom iTunes playlists. Whenever I add a new song to iTunes or when my podcasts are downloaded, Google Music automatically syncs them to the cloud as soon as they touch down on my desktop. I no longer have to remember to put new downloads into my Dropbox folder so that I can sync them with another computer.

But here's the caveat: Google Music doesn't have an option for actually downloading the music you upload back to your hard drive. So while it's nice that your digital music purchases are available for streaming and listening to when you get home, it's not an ideal situation for users who really need a cloud service to actually store and back up their library. However, users with more than one computer in their house will appreciate this kind of access to their entire music collection. The podcast synchronization is really neat, too, especially for Android users who don't have a viable middle-ground in syncing their iTunes content with their phones. With Google Music, they can simply stream the latest podcast from the cloud (provided it was already downloaded to iTunes on their computer).

Speaking of Android, the app is awful. You'd think that Google would enable some wonderful synchronization between a mobile operating system and an online service that they coded from the ground up. Instead, the Google Music app wouldn't even sync with what I had stored in the cloud. All it displayed were the two songs I had readily available on my SD card.

To listen to music offline, you'll have to download each song individually over 3G or Wi-Fi. Otherwise, you're stuck streaming music over 3G or Wi-Fi when you're on the go, which isn't a good experience for those with limited data service plans or reception. And when you factor in that your phone's battery is eventually going to wipe out from streaming your favorite album, the whole "in the cloud" idea loses its appeal.

I also want to address the issues of bandwidth and buffering. Sometimes, I get a little impatient and want to get to just the good part of a song. But when I'd scrub forward in a track, Google Music would often lag behind, struggling to catch up to where I wanted the song to be. It's understandable that the service and its servers may not yet be set up to handle this kind of bandwidth, but what will happen when more users catch on? Furthermore, how will this service affect users with capped internet access? AT&T U-verse and DSL subscribers have a bandwidth cap of 250GB and 150GB, respectively. With Netflix and Hulu replacing cable television in some households, and cloud music services taking over, how will consumers be affected? Sure, it's not a question for Google to answer, but it's something to keep in mind if you're deciding to move your whole life in the cloud.

As a whole, Google Music has a lot of potential for users who are accustomed to keeping a whole backup of their music on a physical hard drive and still want instant access to their new purchases and podcasts anywhere. But unless Google brings some better mobile app integration, I doubt that with Apple's own cloud services appearing on the horizon that Google Music will catch any interest beyond Android users looking for an easier way to get music on their phones. And this is a pity, because I sure do love the way Google Music syncs up with iTunes. Anyway, no one knows how much Google Music will cost just yet, and that whole set up could determine its true success in the cloud sphere.